The First Step in Healing After Traumatic Loss

Healing after a traumatic loss that has devastated your life may feel impossible. Left alone and isolated, the human brain in this situation may remain in a loop of remembered and reactivated guilt, anxiety and depression. However, the first step in healing may not be as complicated as you think: it all begins with self-care. Arthur Kleinman, medical doctor, renowned professor of both psychiatry and anthropology associated with Harvard University and Medical Center, believes caring for ourselves and others “is at the very core of what human experience is about.” Kleinman (2014) wrote: This means that each of us at some point must learn how to endure: the act of going on and giving what we have. And we need, on occasion, to step outside ourselves and look in as if an observer on our endeavors and our relationships—personal and professional—to acknowledge the strength, compassion, courage, and humanity with which we ourselves endure or help to make bearable the hard journeys of others. These are the qualities that make acceptance and striving, if not noble, then certainly deeply human—worthy of respect of ourselves and those whose journeys we share. (Kleinman. “How We Endure.” The Lancet. Volume 383, No. 9912, p119–120. 11 January 2014. Web. 17 Feb. 2016.) His personal memoir, The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor, was released in September 2019. It is a book in which a man speaks from his heart about his journey with his wife thro...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Grief and Loss Trauma Coping grieving Source Type: blogs